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202 RESEARCH ON THEINTERNETfeedback was potentially instantaneous. Also unlike fax
or snail mail, data were instantly computer useable.
Virtual space arose in 1979 with the creation of mul-
tiuser dialog software, originally created for gaming inter-
ests, and USENET. USENET and bulletin board systems
(BBSs) represented a quantum leap in Internet popular-
ity and information sharing. The 1980s saw the growth of
networks dedicated to various research groupings, such as
NFSNET and BITNET. Internet relay chat was developed
in 1988.
Until HYTELNET (the first Internet directory) and
Archie (the first Internet search engine) were released in
1989, researchers were dependent on their own haphaz-
ard exploration, the word of colleagues, and information
posted on mailing lists and newsgroups to identify Inter-
net content. Networks, and network nodes (computers on
the network), were extremely limited and regulated. There
was little or no open access for outside users. Further-
more, users needed to be relatively skillful at using the
UNIX operating language to extract content from the
Internet. Archie changed forever the way content was
accessed on the Internet.
The advent of Gopher software in 1991, and its search
software, Veronica and Jughead, in 1992, completed the
conceptual shift of the Internet from a series of nodes on
a network to a collection of databases, virtual libraries,
and document delivery systems. Searches could be ex-
ecuted and relevant information returned, printed, or
downloaded. Search results were low-cost, increasingly
global, and instantaneous. In 1992, the number of Inter-
net hosts increased to exceed 1,000,000 in 40 countries.
At this time there was little commercial content or traf-
fic on the Internet, and it was essentially a playground for
online searchers and researchers. The Internet Hunt, an
online game where a player located the answers to ques-
tions in the most efficient way, gained enormous popular-
ity. The Internet was inadvertently creating a culture of
searchers.
The World Wide Web (WWW), created in 1992, re-
mained relatively obscure until the creation of the Mosaic
browser in 1993. During this year, the growth of Gopher
was 997%; the growth of the WWW was 341,634% (Zakon,
2001). While the Lynx browser (a graphicless browser) en-
joyed brief success, and is still used faithfully by some, it
has for all practical purposes disappeared. Netscape fol-
lowed on the heels of Mosaic, and researchers have seldom
looked back.
On a different front, Project Gutenberg, begun in 1971
by Michael Hart at the University of Illinois, began host-
ing entire books (classics and older texts) in the public
domain in ASCII text format. These texts could be read
and searched online, or downloaded. Hart’s philosophy
was based not on that of a lending library, but on what
he termed “replicator technology.” Replicator technology
advanced the theory that every digital file possessed infi-
nite possibilities for replication. Project Gutenberg also
launched the phrase “e-texts.” Gutenberg, and similar
projects, such as Net Library, has enormous value for re-
searchers and scholars because they allow full-text online
searching of manuscripts.
Within academic research, academic journals are the
most critical medium for reporting and tracking research.The Internet offered not only another medium for dis-
semination, but also an opportunity to incorporate other
e-text features, such as hyperlinks, into the journals. By
1994 there were over 40 electronic journals on the Internet
(Roes, 1995).
In 1994 the first true WWW directory, Yahoo!, was cre-
ated by David Filo and Jerry Yang at Stanford University.
During the same year, the first WWW search engine,
Lycos, was invented at Carnegie-Mellon University. There
is no way the import of these two inventions can be over-
estimated.
As the Internet has grown to several billion pages, so
has its usability as a research tool. Of particular note is
the Internet’s value to developing nations (Warren, 1995).
Information access and storage is problematic in devel-
oping nations, with the adverse factors of climate, space,
economics, and censorship impacting text-based collec-
tions. The Internet, with its plethora of free information,
is viewed as a literal godsend, allowing information to flow
relatively unfettered from the information rich to the in-
formation poor.DIRECTORIES
Internet directories represent an attempt to organize In-
ternet content, and are invaluable for conducting research
on the Internet. While directories are often referred to as
search engines, they are an entirely separate endeavor, and
they often incorporate search engine software in their en-
terprise. Directories range from a simple list of hypertext
links related by subject, to an extensive and highly detailed
taxonomic organization of subject categories such as The
Open Directory Project.
While directories vary greatly as to design, scope, and
purpose, there are several qualities that they share. Direc-
tories are typically created by people, so there is at least
some degree of human judgment that influences the selec-
tion of Internet sites included. This gives them, potentially,
an inherent authority, but in some cases can also bias
them. Directories are organized according to particular,
and often unique, schema. And directories often feature
site descriptions, annotations, and/or evaluations. On the
negative side, directories are limited, sometimes severely,
in scope and content. Since sites are typically reviewed by
people, and annotations or brief descriptions created, di-
rectories are labor-intensive, and this naturally limits their
size. For the same reasons directories are extremely diffi-
cult to keep up-to-date. Given these constraints, however,
directories created by academics or other subject author-
ities are a critical resource for researchers.
The first online, hypertext directory on the Internet was
HYTELNET, a worldwide directory of telnet sites on the
Internet compiled in 1991 by Peter Scott of the University
of Saskatchewan. The directory was multidimensional,
and featured library catalogs, databases, bibliographies,
BBSs, government sites, and a number of other resources.
Its major flaw was the alphabetical organization, which
created lengthy, unwieldy lists. Furthermore, content was
often impossible to deduce from the nomenclature. These
faults aside, however, HYTELNET represented a major
breakthrough in accessing Internet information. One of
its greatest assets was the list of links to library catalogs